We're Going in a Different Direction
by Ellynne
Summary: Just as the heroes are facing off against Hades, the King of the Underworld gets the results of his performance review.
1. Chapter 1

The heroes were lined up in the throne room, like little bowling ball pins, as they faced Hades. Snow White was finishing a rousing speech on family and hope and a few other things. Hades was just opening his mouth for a sneering comeback; but the slow, sarcastic applause got there first.

Eyes turned to the young woman walking in. A short woman, perhaps Belle's height, she wore a dark, A-line skirt coming down to mid-calf, a tailored vest, gray shirt with button down collar, and black oxfords. She had long, black hair falling past her waist, and brown skin.

"Very nice," she said, giving a passing nod to Snow as she walked past her. "Hello, Uncle," she said to Hades, her eyes hardening. "Are things always so . . . unconventional . . . here? I notice nearly all of these people are _alive_."

Hades scowled. "It's a temporary condition."

"Life usually is. I'd have thought you, of all people, would have noticed by now."

"Look, Seffy, whatever you're here for, it will have to wait. The grownups have work to do."

If anything, the woman's eyes became even harder. "I'm sure they do. If you ever become one, you might try it. That's what I'm here to talk to you about. Father is _not at all pleased_ with how you're running things." Her cold voice turned arctic. "Oh, and, Uncle? My name's Persephone. I know those blue flames burn little details like this right out of your brain, but try and hold onto that thought, will you?"

" _Persephone,_ run along like a good, little girl and tell Daddy that Uncle Hades is taking care of things."

"Oh, yes, and Father has _such_ good reason to believe you when you say things like that, doesn't he? You may have forgotten why Father locked up your heart until you could prove yourself a half-decent person, but he hasn't. And he's had enough." She held out her hand, a large folder appearing out of nowhere. "You can look through this, but I'll give you the summary: You're fired."

Hades hair turned into flames. "What? I'm the Lord of the Underworld! Zeus can't fire me!"

"You're a subordinate who's been on probation since that—what did you call it, Uncle? Oh, yes—my _unfortunate_ visit here. You've also been clogging up the works. As the manual clearly states, which you would know if you ever bothered to read it, souls are meant to move on. This is a way station, a place for them to come to terms with death before going to their final destination. But, you can take that up with Zeus. Get your things and get out."

"You can't do this! The Underworld needs a king! What do you think will happen here without me?"

"Since _nothing's_ been happening here for a very long time, I'm surprised you care. Don't worry, Father's got someone to do the job. That's why he sent me instead of one of the messenger gods. Say hello to the goddess of death, Uncle. I think even you will agree I'm fully qualified."

"You? _You!?_ Zeus thinks _you_ can rule my kingdom?"

" _My_ kingdom, Uncle. Weren't you listening? I know, I know, it's the flames getting to your head, isn't it? This job hasn't been at all good for your nerves. You need a vacation. Starting now." She waved her hand and Hades was gone.

The young woman went over to Hades throne and sat down. Lacing her fingers together, she looked over them at the small gathering in front of her. "Yes, sorry about all that. As you can see, we're under new management. Hopefully, you'll find me an improvement. Now, I've tried to familiarize myself with some of the outstanding problems before coming here; but, perhaps, you'd like to tell me in your own words what seems to be the trouble?"


	2. First Day Jitters

If there was one thing anyone running an Underworld wasn't used to, it was a fresh-faced, squeaky-clean, _smiling_ job-applicant. It was a sincere smile, too. Death gods tend to be very good at weighing character—it's a side effect of being hired—and they could tell. Persephone, for her part, wanted any experience she could get.

The interviewers looked over her resume. "Now, you know, it's not all riding ponies and picking up heroes," a Valkyrie told her. "There's lots of other ways to die. And when you _do_ get a battlefield, a lot of those guys are in a pretty bad way by the time you reach them."

Persephone nodded. "Yes, I know." She gave the enthusiastic, keen look of someone who had done her homework. "Immediate battlefield casualties are often outnumbered by deaths from infected wounds and unsanitary conditions in the field. It is not unusual for the newly dead may have spent days or even weeks in a state of extreme pain and they may be combative or confused. Some may have difficulty understanding they're dead. Among those who refuse to admit they're dead, phantom pain is not unheard of." She said, smiling and eager.

"Uh, right," the interviewer said. "Uh . . . how'd you know that?"

The truth was, Persephone read everything she could on the subject. Also, any time she could find someone remotely connected to the death god trade, she'd become a master at pumping them for information (not hard when it came to Valkyries. It was mostly a matter of knowing where the good drinks were sold and buying a few. Mead might not be a popular on Olympus, but, as the daughter of a Harvest Goddess, Persephone knew all about _anything_ brewed from grain and where to find it. Dionysus was never too hard to find if she needed wine. As for Valkyries other obsession, she had an uncle who _made_ horses).

When she first started out, it baffled her interviewers even more when they saw her previous job experience. "It says here you were a goddess of springtime? Flower making is one of your hobbies?" They looked at her, utterly bewildered. "You do know what job you're applying for, don't you?"

In those days, she'd been happy for anything she could get. She'd cleaned out stables for the Valkyries' flying horses and had given ghost hounds they're dog chow (trying not to lose a limb in the process), anything just to get a foot in the door. She remembered when she'd done an internship as a psychopomp. The hours were long and hard—it gave a whole new meaning to 'graveyard shift'—and no one was ever glad to see the guide for the dead no matter how firm her handshake or how sincere her "So nice to meet you!"

Eventually, though, she'd begun to build a reputation and found herself moving up to actually helping to run afterlives. Administration was only part of what Persephone was interested in, however. Oh, she wanted to know how to make an Underworld work like a smoothly running piece of machinery, but that was only part of her goal.

It was something not many people—even the dead ones—grasped about Underworlds. They were way-stations. As Rhadamanthus had once told her, they shouldn't think of themselves as gods but as guardians. The Underworlds were the Cosmos giving the dead one last chance before going on. They had a duty to judge, but it was to try and understand and help the souls in their care to seize that chance, to set right what they could before facing a different judge, one even the Lords of the Dead didn't truly comprehend.

That was where Uncle Hades had failed at so spectacularly. He'd kept souls trapped in his domain, trying to increase his kingdom. Persephone had had first-hand experience of what that meant when he'd lured her down here. Since then, she'd dedicated herself to being able to move in and clean up the mess he'd made.

And, wow, day one, and here was her first test, a mortal making an impassioned plea for Persephone to break one of the big rules and let the dead guy come back to life.

"Nope," Persephone said. "Sorry. It doesn't work that way. Dead is dead."

"You have to!" Emma Swan said. "We've come too far to give up now! Just because you've never done it before—"

"Never done it before? What gave you that idea? _Lots_ of people come back from the dead. Happens all the time." Persephone had been to this woman's home, the Land Without Magic—it had been a great place to study counseling, management, and theology—and had read all the books they had on near death experiences. She was sure the woman standing in front of her had heard of white tunnels, bright lights, and beckoning relatives. That wasn't the blind spot that was surprising her. "As you should know," Persephone said.

Emma Swan stared at her blankly. So, did her parents and her boyfriend.

"Because you know it happens," Persephone pushed. Still no lights going on. "Because you know someone who did it."

Emma's face cleared. "You mean when Henry recovered from that poisoned apple turnover?"

"Me," Rumplestiltskin said from the back of the throne room. "She means me."

"Stop being so stuck on yourself, Crocodile," Jones said. "Me, me, me. That's all you ever talk about. We're talking about _me_. This has nothing to do with you."

"Actually," Persephone said. "I _did_ mean him."

"What?" Jones said. "Why would you talk about him? What's he done?"

"Died and come back to life. Remember?"

"No, he didn't. I mean, all right, yes, he was dead and, now, he isn't. But, it wasn't anything he did. Someone else did it all for him. He was just along for the ride."

"Hmm, well, I would certainly defer to your firsthand knowledge of going along for the ride," Persephone said. "But, as I was saying, there are two issues here. The first is whether or not Mr. Jones here _can_ come back to life—"

" _Captain_ ," Jones said. "It's _Captain_ Jones."

"—the other is whether or not I should _let_ him come back to life. It's no on both counts."

"What!?" Emma said. "No, you can't!"

 _I'm the Goddess of Death and I can._ Persephone didn't say that. These were living people, but she decided to treat them like any newly dead soul that was having trouble grasping their change in vital status. Go gently, that was the ticket. She looked at Belle Gold (a fascinating person, by all account, even if the stress of being dragged into this realm was showing. More importantly, one of two mortals present who was likely to grasp hard facts). "Mrs. Gold, I understand you went to great lengths once to establish the guilt or innocence of an Ogre. Is this correct?"

"I got a magic mirror that would establish its intentions," Belle said warily.

"Right, because, if you'd just released an Ogre that went on a killing rampage, you'd have felt responsible, wouldn't you? Maybe even a little guilty?"

"That sounds about right."

 _Playing it cautious,_ Persephone thought. _Smart._ "So, you can understand, can't you, how I'd feel about sending someone back to the land of the living who would only cause a _lot_ of deaths."

Emma jumped in. "No, he wouldn't! How can you say that about him?"

OK, maybe it she should use a little less gentleness and a bit more tough love. "Ms. Swan, I can think of lots of reasons, but let's start with this one." She pulled a folder out of the air. It was about three inches thick. Persephone tossed it to her. "That's a file on everyone whose death your boyfriend bears some responsibility for. The ones with the black tabs are ones he killed himself. Red tabs were killed under his orders. Neverland green are people who died after he did something like sell them to Pan, who got them killed. Pink are for ones where he was an accessory but someone else was in charge—that includes all the murders he helped Cora with. White is for deaths he may have some responsibility in but didn't carry out himself. He just played a significant part in the casual chain, like the half of his crew who died when he took them into Neverland. Also, people who died when food, medicine, the family savings, anything like that, were lost when because of pirate attacks. Yellow is for relatives, whether he killed them directly—like his father—or abandoned them, like his kids."

"Kids?" Jones said. "I haven't got any kids! You're crazy!"

 _And he sees nothing insane about calling the Death Goddess with power over his immediate fate crazy._ Persephone decided to use small words _._ "Maybe no one ever explained—" _Oops! Smaller words!_ "—I mean, no one _told you_ how this works, Mr. Jones—"

"Captain!"

"—but. . . ." she hesitated, looking at young Henry. She didn't doubt Jones knew a lot of words for what she wanted to get across, but she would bet very few of them were appropriate to use in front of a thirteen year old boy. Or anyone else, for that matter. "you know that _thing_ you like to do with the women you get drunk? Or the ones you lie to and tell that line about you being a prince? Or any of those other pick-up lines of yours? That _thing_ makes babies. You can trust me on this. My mother's a fertility goddess—and my aunt oversees marriages. I know about this stuff. Unfortunately, the Enchanted Forest isn't all that good at contraception." She frowned at him, "I'm sure I don't have to tell you what happens to children abandoned by their fathers in your world. Their survival odds aren't good."

"He wouldn't. . . . He _didn't. . . ._ " Emma looked uncertainly at Jones. Then, she rallied. "You're wrong about his father. Killian didn't kill his father. His father abandoned him."

"Not quite." _Gently,_ Persephone reminded herself. _Think of her as newly dead. Go easy on her. "_ His father got imprisoned, he was set free, and Killian killed him. Isn't that right?"

Jones rolled his eyes. "Oh, sure, when you put it that way, it sounds like a bad thing."

"What?" Emma turned on him. "Killian, you said—you told me—" She turned on Persephone again. "You're just twisting things. If Killian did it, I'm sure he had a good reason."

"We can let the patricide go for the moment, Ms. Swan. Let's just look at the a simple chain of events—we won't talk about guild or intention, just about why the land of the living may not be the best place for Mr. Jones—"

"Captain!" Jones corrected.

"—to be right now. Let's suppose he had fallen off that beanstalk not long after you met him, do you know how many people would still be alive?"

Emma was shaken but she wasn't giving in that easily. "How would that make any difference?"

Jones nodded. "What she said. Unless I landed on people. They'd be dead I guess. Nothing else would have changed. I'm a nice guy. Ask anyone?"

"Let's see," Persephone began counting off on her fingers. "You would never have shot Belle in the back after she saved your life—has anyone ever explained to you that shooting an unarmed woman in the back without warning is cowardly? Even if she hasn't saved your life? Bad form, Mr. Jones, bad form."

" _Captain._ 'Bad form, _Captain_ Jones.'"

"So, she wouldn't have had that amnesia problem and Gold probably wouldn't have left Storybrooke while Cora was rampaging about—not that she would have been rampaging about, because you wouldn't have given her that bean you stole to get here.

"Which means the man Cora murdered in Dr. Hopper's place wouldn't have been killed, and Cora would have never murdered Snow's nurse, Johanna.

"There's also that incident with the man Cora turned into a fish, that wouldn't have happened either.

"Of course, you would never have tried to kill Mr. Gold in New York and you wouldn't have helped Regina get the doomsday device to destroy the town.

"So, Pan's minions wouldn't have been able to use imminent destruction as a distraction while they kidnapped Henry to take him to Neverland.

"Without Henry, Pan would have quietly died of old age when his time ran out, and Gold would never have had to sacrifice his life to save all of you from him—you do remember that, don't you? You all owe your lives to the man standing in this room? I mention it because you seem to have a real problem showing gratitude." The living might not be her responsibility but, sometimes, some things needed to be said. "I mean, you couldn't put off your mushroom skype to Merlin for five minutes to even pretend to think about trying to rescue him when he was comatose and kidnapped by your insane daughter—no offense, Ms. Swan. I'm sure you're going to remind me that you were under a curse and not yourself and that your sparkly, little soul should not be held responsible for anything you did then even if you would never dream of extending the same courtesy to anyone else who wasn't your gaslighting boyfriend."

Emma gave her a baffled look. "Uh, who else is there?"

 _She meant that. Recorders of Fate, are you taking notes? She meant that._ "Gee. I don't know. Anyone who, despite being under the Dark Curse, still managed to save your life I don't know how many times, at least one of them at the cost of his own? Ring any bells?

"But, getting back to your boyfriend. No dead Gold means no Baelfire, alias Neal Cassady, dying to bring him back. And Hook wouldn't have nearly killed Prince Eric—I know he told you he helped Ariel save her prince, but the truth is he decided to murder the only person who could have told how to get to Eric in time. Be very glad my cousin Ursula-Scylla got involved, or Eric would be down here with the rest of you.

"So, no dead Neal, no Zelena taking control of Gold and sending him spiraling down into darkness, which means none of that craziness with the hat or Gold getting exiled. . . . I'm sorry, but this sounds win-win all around."

"Gold took back the curse!" Emma said desperately. "Killian would have gotten rid of it forever, but Gold took it back."

"So? If you'd listened at all when anyone explained what happened when Zelena brought Gold back to life, you'd know that it wouldn't matter. Mr. Jones—and don't tell me you're a captain. You're _not_ a captain. You'd been busted down to lieutenant before you decided to desert from your king's navy and you were officially stripped of that when your navy learned how you'd turned pirate and were murdering people up and down the coast, including any crew members who objected to killing and plundering for the fun of it—If _Mr._ Jones had died without someone else taking the curse, he'd have stayed dead until _some idiot_ decided she was willing to do _anything_ to get him back, no matter what the risks. Of course, in that case, she'd just have to find someone she was willing to sacrifice to get her Killy-Willy back. Since you've already tried to kill Mr. Gold multiple times and you didn't even think twice about threatening his wife to blackmail him into getting you here, I have a good guess who that would have been."

"I wouldn't have—"

"Ms. Swan, you packed up your whole family and brought them into the Underworld despite knowing how dangerous it was and _not having a plan to get out._ You brought your _thirteen year old son._ There are two babies who have no one to take care of them because you brought their parents down here. One of them is still _nursing._ And you brought his _mother_ here. Are you honestly going to sit there and tell me you wouldn't have done something just as stupid and a whole lot less dangerous? Less dangerous to you. Not so much for your victim."

"Uhh. . . ."

"Look, it's not my place to judge the living. But, I'm going to give you some advice. You used to have a conscience and a brain before you met Jones and he started messing with your head. I think, if you get clear of him, you can find them again."

"Hey, I've got a brain!"

"Really, Ms. Swan? _You blackmailed the Dark One_. You did it _by threatening his wife._ That's either stupid or suicidal." _And you never even thought about why he went along with it. Even when his son managed to contact you from Beyond, you never even thought about telling him he wouldn't find Baelfire in this world._ "And you did it so you could find Mr. Jones and stick your heart in him.

"Now, besides the fact that the only reason that worked for your parents was that they're about as unified in thought and purpose as two people can be and there is _no way_ you're ever going to be that for Jones—I know you've been working awfully hard at destroying your own personality and giving up any sign of independent thought, but you're still nowhere near being the little zombie you'd have to be to pull this off—this plan was never going to work."

Emma looked uncertainly at the thick binder Persephone had given her, but Charmings were nothing if not stubborn. She rallied once again. "You're wrong. Killian and I could share a heart." It sounded more like a question than a statement. "I—I know we could."

 _Lords of Olympus, give me strength_. "Even if you could, Ms. Swan, do you remember how your parents did it? Your mother stuck the heart in your father's _body._ "

Pause.

Wait for her to get it.

Wait a little longer.

OK, give her a hint. "Jones' body isn't here."

Still not getting it.

How did these people survive when Gold wasn't there to tell them how to tie their shoelaces so they didn't trip over them and die? "You left his body behind in Storybrooke.

"And, er, just FYI, Jones requested burial at sea. Or that's what Smee said when the funeral home contacted him—that would be the funeral home you forgot to call before arranging this field trip. And there are a lot of undersea animals that keep an eye out for bodies being dropped into their food chain. Even if you could find him, there's not much left. A heart and hand aren't the only bits he's missing by now.

"Well, it's been lovely chatting with all of you, but I have an Underworld to run. Have a nice day. Oh, and word of advice? Like I said, it's not my job to judge the living but, really, you need to work on thinking about other people. Try showing some gratitude and consideration for others, why don't you? I'd really like our next meeting to go better."


End file.
